


The Professor's Daughter

by pocketbookangel



Category: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, F/F, Mathematics, napoleon of crime, spinsters, the origin story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 09:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5660863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketbookangel/pseuds/pocketbookangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Holmestice Winter 2015<br/>Inspired by the prompt: <em>Patricia Donleavy, Spinster Mathematician, at any stage of her life -- her budding interest in mathematics, her own academic career, whether she took over her father's organization or built a new one to challenge it.</em></p>
<p>It should be noted that Mary herself does not appear in this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Professor's Daughter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanguinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/gifts).



> Special thanks to [evelyn_b](http://archiveofourown.org/users/evelyn_b) for encouraging me to send it instead of defaulting at the last minute.

My father used to tell me that humanity's greatest flaw was its lack of imagination. We make decisions based on misguided instincts or accidents of biology.

Even when I was a small child he would speak to me as an adult, while the governess was allowed to guide me in French and drawing, he took responsibility for my education in mathematics and science. I remember sitting with him on the thick carpet in his study, firelight dancing over the rows of books and heavy furniture, and listening to him talk about the systems we use to count the world.

“God has graced us with four fingers and a thumb on each hand, but had we been formed differently…” he folded his thumb into his palm. The shadows falling away from his curled fingers reminded me of a spider.

“If we only had eight fingers, we couldn’t draw things or hold a spoon,” I said.

This thought worried me. Mama was always so careful about table manners. My father laughed, then took a small velvet bag from his desk, opened it, and let the golden coins it held tumble before my dazzled eyes. It seemed a fortune.

“What year is it, my dear?”

“1881,” I answered.

“Eighty-one, excellent number, please count eighty-one coins for me.” These coins were nothing like the bright shillings or copper pennies I’d received as pocket money in the past. I carefully stacked them neatly in columns of ten, with a single coin left on its own.

“If you had been born a poor thumbless child?” he asked, encouraging me to count in a new way.

I studied my work. My father moved his hand slightly and I remembered the spider. I removed the top coins and started rebuilding while he watched me with quiet approval. Many years later, I would give this childish assignment to Mary Russell as a prelude to my father’s difficult work in base-8.

“Here… I have eight eights. And here I have eight and eight. And one all alone.”

“All alone, yes.” He picked up the single coin, then sent it spinning.

“Heads or tails, Patricia? If you get it wrong you have to listen to mama and say your prayers; if you get it right, you can do whatever you like.”

“Heads!” I shouted, gleefully waiting for the spinning to stop. The coin slowed, a foreign queen’s imperious visage appearing and vanishing. I held my breath. Finally it stopped, balanced perfectly on its edge. My father laughed a little at my disappointment. I hadn’t known it was possible for a coin to come up neither heads nor tails.

“Well, my dear. It appears you will have to do both.”

That bag of coins would be one of the few possessions I would save from my father’s study after he was brutally murdered by Sherlock Holmes.

 

1894

We’d gone to the lake before the sun rose. Bobbie was unhappy with the painting she’d been working on for the end of year exhibition, and she’d had the idea of shrugging off the Hudson River School influence and painting something classical, like Diana bathing in the moonlight.

“I think you’d be a simply peachy Diana,” she said.

“Peachy?” I said, raising a sceptical eyebrow.

Roberta Fairfield was an art student from one of the older New York families; twenty-five years earlier, her mother had been one of the earliest graduates of this college, and her grandmother still lived in one of the elegant houses on the north side of Washington Square. This meant her verbal infelicities were often indulged rather than condemned by the same professors who found much to reproach in my ambiguous accent and Irish name.

I’d spent my first few months at college sequestered in my room with my books, refusing all invitations to dinners, croquet on the lawn, and musical performances by visiting university boys. The other girls who shared the rooms eventually stopped asking. I’d resisted all of Bobbie’s attempts at conversation, until the cold November day when she barged into my room.

“Listen, Donleavy, have some mercy on a poor girl. I’m about to stick this chemistry exam, which would be the end of school for me. If you can get me through it, I’ll be forever in your debt.” She knelt down in front of me and clasped my hands in the manner of a melodrama heroine. Her blue eyes were wide and beseeching, and I am fairly certain she’d left her russet hair unbound out of a desire to be picturesque, not because she was too involved in her studies for vanity.

Despite my annoyance, I found myself blushing. I agreed to tutor her, and to my enduring pride, she came in a solid middle, which was a laudable accomplishment for a woman who described herself as having paint for brains. The tutoring had become friendship, which had led to this, a request to spend a chilly April morning posing outside in very little clothing.

“It’s too cold,” I said. I turned back to the building. A few lights shone out from the upper windows. If I could see them, what could they see?

“You don’t need to get into the water, just put your feet in. I saw a Diana at the Louvre last summer, very pink and self-satisfied. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to paint a real huntress.”

“I don’t think…” I arranged the scarf over my lap, a compromise between art and modesty.

“I see it even if you don’t. Oh, Patricia, you need to come to Europe with me this summer. You’ll love it, and if you think about it, you’ll be doing me a favour, rescuing me from Julia and her noisy brother. I was sure that Van Vechten bellowing at Van Vechten could be heard from London to Firenze.”

“I can’t.” Until my mother recovered, I would stay near New York. She’d become ill soon after our arrival, and for the past six months had been at a hospital near Central Park. I went down to visit her every other weekend, and would have stayed, but she insisted that I fulfil my father’s academic dreams.

The sky brightened and birds happily rioted in the emerging greenery, but the ground remained chilled with the memory of recent snow. Bobbie and I were both quiet, letting nature continue as if we were not present. A deer came down to the water, oblivious and innocent.

“She know her goddess is here,” Bobbie said, her voice unusually soft.

“Goddess? More like Sappho, ha!” A booming voice broke the stillness. I wrapped my shawl around me and glared at the intruder. Forget about London and Florence, Julia Van Vechten’s voice could be heard from upstate New York to the Middle West. She had a passion for golf and rowing and croquet and tennis—anything that wasn’t a book.

“There’s a letter for you, Donleavy. They said it needed an answer.” I opened the letter and began to read, while Julia decided to stay and offer Bobbie a less-than-useful critique.

The hospital hadn’t been paid and my mother was going to be transferred to the indigent hospital on Blackwell’s Island. I had to arrange for her bills to be paid immediately, or go down to the city myself.

Bobbie insisted on coming with me on the train even though I couldn't tell her the cause of my distress. Seeing me in pain was enough. At the station, she reluctantly let me go on alone, pressing her grandmother’s address into my hand so that I would know where to find her if I needed help.

The hospital looked like a castle, round towers keeping watch over Central Park, and I sometimes suspected their treatments were of a similar medieval nature. My mother had always been ill in New York, grief wore away at her heart as we moved from hotel to hotel in our desperate search for a safe refuge, so the final, terrible diagnosis that had come a few months ago had not been a surprise.

“I didn’t want them to worry you,” my mother said when I came into her hospital room.

She was so much smaller than I remembered. At Christmas, her shoulders had been straight and her hair still as dark as midnight, not thin and streaked with grey. When I was a child, I used to watch, fascinated, as her maid wound the thick strands into elaborate braids, held in place with jewelled pins, a few curls framing her lively face.

“Your father can teach you the equations that describe each spiral,” she’d said, twisting the hair around her fingers, “but I will teach you about the art.” I hadn’t cared to learn, and now I never would.

“What exactly did the lawyer say?”

Her eyes were cloudy and unfocused. “He said there’s no money.”

“How can there be no money? What about the income from the estates in Ireland, the investments, the silver mine in Nevada?”

“Some of that was lost. Some we never had. Patricia, what they said after your father’s death—”

“Was a lie. Dr Watson concocted that ridiculous slander about my father to cover the suicide of his supposed friend. We should have stayed in England and fought for his name against those money-hungry publicity-seeking vultures.” Every time I thought about what had been done to our family, I became so angry that the world around me became hazy and unstable.

After my father’s murder, I studied every word published about Sherlock Holmes. I read and reread the cases, alert to the inconsistencies and the lies. Every page was covered with my scrawl noting the times when Dr Watson didn’t seem to know what year it was or even his own name. Yet the public had mourned for Sherlock Holmes, while no one cared that my father’s name had been smeared with blood.

My mother looked up, her eyes suddenly clear. “Your father did what he had to do. He did it to protect us, and because he knew what this world is like. Some people have to be leaders. He understood that, Patricia, and one day you will understand it as well. Take this.”

Sher unfastened her gold locket and held it out to me.

“Mama, I can’t—”

“It’s all we have left of him.” She dropped the locket into my hand.

I stopped outside the hospital to buy a newspaper, then walked to the station to catch the Third Avenue El. I'd met my father's lawyer once, an affable man in a well-tailored suit, but the address my mother had given me was not in a respectable part of town, but near Chatham Square. I glanced down at the newspaper in my hand. Gun battles out west and a royal wedding.

 

SHERLOCK HOLMES ALIVE

RENOWNED DETECTIVE SOLVES PARK LANE MYSTERY

 

My eyes raced over the words.

_Professor James Moriarty, often called “the Napoleon of Crime…”_

Lies and slander. I read the article, barely comprehending what was before me. Without realizing what I was doing, by the time I reached the station, I’d shredded it into minuscule pieces, as if by obliterating its presence, I could drive it from my mind.

The crowded streets downtown were poisoned with foul air; brick and stone from older buildings rotted away leaving traps for the unwary. I made my way past tenements and wooden buildings which still bore the scorched traces of long ago fire. My anger propelled me through the crowds of men who congregated in idle, drunken clusters. As I walked up Mott Street, the signs changed to a Chinese script, and I wondered if the address I’d been given was correct.

Lewis Smith, Esquire was on the ground floor of a small wooden house that was nestled between a high brick wall and a saloon. I burst into the office without knocking.

“Have you seen the newspaper today?” My voice sounded high and unnatural, and I’d forgot the original reason for my visit.

“Miss Moriarty, or should I say Donleavy. What brings you to my humble office? You should’ve told me you were coming to the city, I would’ve found a more suitable place for us to meet.” His words were friendly, but he was in his shirt-sleeves and his grey hair was sticking up at odd angles. He inclined his head slightly, and for the first time I noticed that he wasn’t alone.

Hair coloured a red not found in nature, a barely concealed bosom, an emerald shawl: the woman in his office was clearly not respectable. “Who’s your friend?” she asked. Her voice was deep and her accent was as mixed as the crowds outside. “She looks too dull to be one of my rivals.”

“This young lady is Miss Patricia Moriarty, daughter of our late Napoleon,” he said.

I flinched at the reference. “How dare you. That newspaper was full of lies.”

“Too true.” The lawyer chuckled. “The Hannibal, the Alexander of Crime would be more apropos. But where are my manners? Miss Moriarty, I’d like to introduce you to Mme Madeline delaTour, owner of Maison Rouge on Mulberry and Maison Fleur on the Bowery. High-quality French dining, or that’s what the police pretend to believe.”

“Dry up, Louie. Is she really the Professor’s kid?” Mme delaTour stared at me, an unreadable expression in her dark eyes.

“Would I lie to you?” Lewis Smith, Esquire, London Louie to his associates, smoothed down his wayward hair and tried for a charming smile.

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it buggered you. Get out.” She dismissed him with a disdainful wave. She got up, clicked the lock, then pressed her ear to the door. “The tricky bastard is hunting for a cup or something so he can listen in.”

“I don’t know what your relationship was to my father—”

“When I was your age, maybe younger, I worked for a Five Points jack who’d do me out of my regulars. I petitioned your father, he saw fit to invest in my _restaurant_ scheme and I was never troubled until now. He kept the peace and played fair. When I heard the newsboys yelling about Sherlock Holmes, I thought if he could survive, maybe the Professor…” She waited for my answer.

“No,” I said. “I would know. My mother would know.”

“That’s a shame. When he was alive, people had some respect for his business partners. Now every skinner, flash-man, and Bowery Boy south of Delancey thinks they can come get a meal for free, and the pigs root around for their share. What am I paying protection for, I ask Louie, and he don’t say.”

I tried to imagine my father standing here in this office or dining at Maison Fleur of the Bowery. Did he smoke cigars with London Louie? Did he kiss Mme delaTour’s hand and make polite conversation. He loved his books. He loved spending the night working out problems and coming to breakfast with ink-stained fingers. He loved my mother and he loved me.

“Your father would have made it right,” Mme delaTour said.

I touched the gold locket my mother had given me. The cool metal reminded me of the gold coins in my father’s study, and how a crooked spin could come up both heads and tails. “My father was a good man,” I said.

“He kept his promises, saw that people got what was right, and that’s better than good. We have good men visiting here all the time, for all the good that does any of us. Maybe you can talk to some of your father’s old friends and they can help me. If you do, I’ll personally see to it that Louie keeps the money flowing your way. Did you hear that, Louie?” she yelled abruptly. A couple of thumps on the other side of the door answered her.

I promised to be at Maison Fleur at midnight, then Louie brought out certain boxes that he had been holding for my father. Maps, ledgers, bonds stamped by banks that no longer existed, a heavy military pistol, an elaborately carved dagger pitted with dark scars that had once held jewels.

“It was like that when I got it,” Louie said.

I removed some items that could be quickly turned into cash to pay the hospital, and after some thought, I took the weapons as well.

My mother was sleeping when I returned to the hospital. It was quiet and peaceful, the greenery of the park provided the illusion of restoration and good health, but it was still a hospital. When all of this was settled, I was going to move my mother into the finest hotel in New York City and hire a private nurse to care for her. Even in sleep, her forehead was creased with pain. I stayed by her side until it was time to go downtown.

Word had spread swiftly, “The Professor’s back.” Moriarty beat Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty beat death, and he’ll be with us at midnight.

Maison Fleur was a riot of pink lampshades and gaudy upholstery. Red and gold and violet draped over every surface and reflected brightly in the gilded mirrors that lined the back walls. I slipped in quietly and Mme delaTour guided me to a table in a shaded alcove. The room was crowded with gangs of men, drinking with feverish excitement. It was easy to tell which men belonged to which gang because they wore even the humblest symbol, a hat or a vest, proudly. One gang paraded with green bands tied around their arms, another wore tweed vests over cheap shirts. At first glance, the only women in the room seemed to be the ones who worked there. They were obvious, their dresses were as bright and as revealing as their employer’s.

As I studied the crowd, I found other women, some of them in clothing as modest and sombre as my own. One of the most boisterous groups of young men was made up of more than young men: there were girls my own age, wearing trousers with their hair cut short. A sharp regret pained my heart when I saw them and I remembered Bobbie bringing up a trunk of her brother’s clothes to school so she could play a Shakespearian lover. That was less than a month ago, but it already seemed like something that had happened to someone else.

My presence had not gone completely unobserved. A dark-haired young man, considerably younger than the gang he led, had positioned himself so he could keep one eye on his men, and the other on the revelry in the mirror. I could see him wondering who I was, but he had decided to be patient.

One of Mme delaTour’s girls came over to my table. “It’s starting,” she said. “When the lights go out, stand up.” The room was suddenly plunged into darkness. I felt for the weapons I’d concealed under my coat, then rose to my feet.

A single, brilliant light illuminated Mme delaTour who stood on a makeshift stage in the middle of the room. “We have a very distinguished visitor with us tonight,” she shouted. The room broke into cheers. They banged on the tables and stamped their feet, chanting my father’s name. I climbed on to the stage and faced the crowd. They fell silent.

“Miss Patricia Moriarty,” Mme delaTour announced. “The Professor’s daughter will be carrying on his work.”

Standing above the crowd with every face turned to mine and every ear listening for my voice was intoxicating.

“I will carry on his work. I will enforce his agreements.” My voice was quiet, but it was heard throughout the room.

A broad-shouldered man in a blue coat pushed his way through the crowd, leading his followers to stand directly in front of me. “It’s time for the agreements to be reconsidered,” he said, black whiskers bristling. “The Professor was a good son of Ireland and he’d not be wanting his daughter to be siding with the Italians or the tongs against his own people.”

Mme delaTour and the lawyer had both advised me to let them take care of anyone who wanted to cause a problem. She signalled to her girls, while the lawyer started to make his way toward the stage. I decided to prolong the confrontation to allow them extra time to act.

I drew the pistol out from under my coat and pointed it at my challenger. “My father’s reputation for fairness will not be squandered on petty tribal loyalties.” He looked at me without blinking, while his men clamoured and hooted. I pulled the trigger.

The gunshot exploded, hitting him directly in the chest. My arm shook from the unexpected force—it took all of my self-control and courage not to drop the gun and scream. His men scattered, abandoning the body of their fallen leader.

The crowd roared, their boots stomping approval. This time, it was my name they were chanting. I climbed down off the stage, the crowd parted to let me pass, a murderous honour guard cheering for me as I made my way out to the street.

The Bowery was almost deserted. The drunks and beggars had heard the shot and disappeared before they could be rounded up and questioned.

“Excuse me, Miss Moriarty, a moment please.” It was the dark-haired man who had been watching me from the beginning of the night. He’d been talking with a Chinese man in traditional work clothes. Carefully tended fingernails told me that neither man did much work with their hands.

“Mr Yu and I watched your performance with great interest. Mr Yu’s group and my own have had some disagreements in the past, but we believe the right person could help us work together for our mutual benefit,” the dark-haired man said.

“Mr Eastman says that your organization operates with great efficiency and fairness,” Mr Yu said. “We would be most honoured if you would grant our request.”

My organization. My father’s legacy would become my own.

I promised them that I would deal honestly and told them to send the details to London Louie. We watched the police storm into Maison Fleur and bring out their chosen suspects. Not a single one glanced in our direction. The business of the Bowery resumed, and the two gangsters faded into its shadows.

The air must have been turning cold because I couldn’t stop shivering in my heavy coat. The weight of the gun hadn’t been so noticeable before. I stumbled up the Bowery with the idea of finding my way uptown to respectability and safety. My mind couldn’t stop circling around the image of the man in the blue coat. The man who had died—his coat had been soaked in blood. He’d put on his blue coat, confident and proud, not knowing that it was for the last time. I made my way through the tangle of streets as exhaustion wore away at my bones.

Washington Square Park was serene and completely empty. How could such peace exist so near to chaos? I stood outside the Fairfield house and in my weakened state the houses, with their perfectly symmetrical windows and columns, seemed unnatural and sinister. It would not be possible for me to pass into such a dwelling. I would be driven away as hungry ghosts are by cold iron.

There was a movement in one of the upper windows, followed by the fragile glow of candlelight. The front door opened slowly, and Bobbie looked out, her face and hair still rumpled with sleep.

“Patricia? What time is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, following her into the house. “I don’t know,” I repeated. I kept saying _I don’t know I don’t know_ until I was crying too much to talk. I sobbed hysterically while Bobbie stroked my hair and offered meaningless reassurances.

 

1899

“I’ve decided to forgive you for abandoning New York, so I’ve bought you the most splendid going away present.” Bobbie examined the disarray in my hotel room with some amusement. “Why so many dresses? If you go to Paris before Oxford, you can have dresses made there.”

“I’m going there to study, not to promenade like a popinjay,” I said.

I was always happy to see Bobbie, but we moved in different worlds now that college was behind us. She was one of Society’s most eligible, while I devoted myself to scholarship. She scolded me for spending too much time with books and not enough time with people. I couldn’t tell her that everything I’d learned about people over the past few years had only made me more enamoured of mathematics. There was a certain grace in solving an equation and following the numbers as they assumed their correct places. There was nothing graceful or beautiful about stepping over bodies in a flophouse or wrangling politicians in London Louie’s ramshackle office. It had to be done. Some people are leaders who have the imagination and the will to keep the world running.

“What is a popinjay? Maybe they’re those creatures the Van Vechtens tried to pass off as quail the other night. Patricia, my dear, you need to put a dress with fewer ink stains and come with me.”

Our cab stopped outside the Garrick Theater. I stepped out and was confronted by a theatrical poster:

 

William Gillette

“SHERLOCK HOLMES”

 

My enemy had become a romantic hero.

“Isn’t it wonderful? I thought of you the moment I saw it.” Bobbie’s eyes sparkled.

I paused to collect my thoughts. My first impulse was to scream every obscenity I’d heard on the Bowery. “Why would you think of me?”

“When we shared rooms, you were always reading Sherlock Holmes stories. They were the only books you had besides textbooks and you wrote the funniest notes in the margins. There was one about Sherlock Holmes teasing a snake and another about his university career. In fact, I did wonder if you were going to Oxford because Sherlock Holmes went there.”

“He went to Cambridge.”

“You knew that! I didn’t know that, but you did. I think you could tell me everything about Sherlock Holmes if you tried.” She took my arm and led me into the lobby.

I watched with cold eyes as Sherlock Holmes outwitted bumbling criminals and came face to face with a demon who bore my father’s name. It was an idiotic joke, but the audience adored it, some of them clapping vigorously as the great detective found love with the winsome heroine.

Bobbie could tell I hadn’t liked the play. She was disappointed, but she did laugh when I described it as a disjointed mix of “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Final Problem”.

“I don’t think there will ever be a Sherlock Holmes play that could satisfy you,” she said.

“I think it would've been very satisfactory if he had died at the end,” I said, smiling as if it were a joke.


End file.
